Read @ Joe’s

Title: Blood & Mascara (2024) Author: Colin Krainin Publisher: Pulp Lit Book jacket: Washington, DC, 1997. Iris is watching Bronze. Bronze is following Carolyn. Carolyn is sleeping with Billy. Now Billy is dead and a killer is coming for them all. Joe says: Blood & Mascara contains everything a reader would want in genre murder mystery. But the noir element is often side-stepped into a mess of internal crises that although seem important, are mostly irrelevant; a lot like the nineties themselves.

Blood & Mascara is an old school PI tale that is wonderfully set in, and perfectly captures, the political landscape of the nineties. There is a dead congressman, a murdered PAC leader, and a cheating wife on the run. DC-based PI Bronze Goldberg is on the case along with his garbage scow-sized container of internal baggage: alcoholism, lost love, and an Olympic-level mastery of judo. Blood & Mascara contains everything a reader would want in genre murder mystery.

Author Colin Krainin also provides much, much more as Bronze’s internal agony turns this original detective story into a deep read of suffering and bad choices. Of parallel stories and superhero origins. Of long paragraphs of clipped phrases and memories. All of which burden the murder mystery like a soaked overcoat.

Blood & Mascara is presented in a cinematic style as Bronze, on a typical case of martial jealousy and cheating, first hand witnesses the murder of his client, political think-tank leader Roger Haake. Haake’s murder, soon to be revealed as an assassination by the international hitman known as the Machine, is tied into the death of Congressman Billy Kopes. This spooks Carolyn Haake, Roger’s unfaithful wife, into rabbiting. 

Whereas the story could have just as quickly become another “on the run” road story full of strange encounters, dark alley shoot ‘em-ups, and risque liaisons, Blood & Mascara instead becomes a true investigative piece. Bronze enlists, or becomes enlisted by, his landlord/novelist Iris Margaryan and Metro PD Detective Mark Roth. The three of them prove to be a unique and entertaining team. 

Yet in between the pulp fiction goodness, Krainin side tracks into deep, near-existential commentary that would fit perfectly into a Don DeLillo or even a later Hemingway yarn. Continuing with a cinematic feel, Krainin drops hints and sets up reveals later linking Bronze’s past failures and trauma’s near-conveniently with elements of his case. Many of these reveals – the flashing color of turquoise, Carolyn’s past, his previous life as a newspaper reporter – would work in a Lynch-ian fashion for a movie adaptation, but often times reads as a confusing info dump. Instead of being rewarded with an a-ha moment, the instance becomes a deflated oh yeah.  

Krainin jumps back and forth between past and present. The methodical workings and rationalization of the hitman are counterpoint to a gruesome bloodbath brought on by a (sigh) serial killer. Iris’s youth and buoyancy are weighted down by Bronze’s inaction and yearnings. Krainin’s multiple POVs are at first interruptive but soon both author and reader slip into a groove that is not so much comfortable as it is recognizable. 

Krainin presents a compelling mystery with a cool cast of characters. Both Iris and Roth are interesting co-stars who each get their own story and time to grow. Yet, Krainin deviates one too many times into internal concoctions of word soup that drowns the main plot. The steady beat of Blood & Mascara’s noir is often side-stepped into a mess of internal crises that although seem important, are mostly irrelevant; a lot like the nineties themselves. 

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Thanks to NetGalley and Pulp Lit for the free preview of Blood & Mascara.